Are you ready to participate

STV – Are you ready to participate in the dialogue?

This year, we devoted an entire Learning Day to the topic of electoral reform, and the proposed STV system in BC. The discussion was extraordinary, and many of our learners said it left them hungry for more information about STV, which we will be voting on May 17, and more discussion about it with other leaders.

With that in mind, STV has presented itself as a timely topic for testing our plan to create an online Leadership Conversation Forum. This is an effort to better fulfill our role in increasing discussion of community issues at a leadership level. This is such an opportunity.

This STV forum was created in collaboration with Roger Chilton, a friend of Leadership Vancouver and community leader. Roger created the facility for this discussion about STV for us, hugely assisted by Hanna Daber, through the Quantumideas website.

With the provincial election less than a month away, we hope the discussion on the referendum on electoral reform will not be drowned out by Liberal-versus-NDP-versus-Green political debate. Gordon Campbell’s government deserves credit for giving the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform the rare opportunity to examine our electoral process and make recommendations for changing it. After 10 months of study, research and debate, including 50 public hearings and 1,603 written submissions from the public, the Citizens’ Assembly recommended the STV option.

Under this system, voters rank candidates by numbers on the ballot paper. The assembly says the single transferable vote is designed to make every vote count, and to reflect voters’ support for candidates and parties as fairly as possible, while retaining local representation by MLAs.

As you vote on May 17, we ask you to remember that a representative, independent, non-partisan group of citizens chose this option.